BBC - History - British History in depth: Symbiosis: Trade and the British Empire Print this page A flourishing power The long 18th century, from the Glorious Revolution until Waterloo, was the period in which Britain rose to a dominant position among European trading empires, and became the first western nation to industrialise. The extent of economic change between 1688 and 1815 can be discerned through a glimpse at the state of economic and social conditions at home, and the growth of trade and empire at the beginning and end of that period. In 1688 England and Wales had a population of 4.9 million, and the internal economy was still largely based on agricultural work and production. Domestic industry flourished, with many workers pursuing dual occupations on a seasonal basis in industry and agriculture. English society contained a flourishing and more extensive middling sector than any other western country, including the Dutch Republic. This provided a strong platform for commerce with, and settlement in, far-flung territories. The long 18th century was the period in which Britain rose to a dominant position among European trading empires...

Merchants sent out ships to trade with North America and the West Indies, where England had established a network of colonies, following on from the permanent settlement of Virginia in 1607 and the acquisition of Barbados in 1625. Some 350,000 people had emigrated from England across the Atlantic by the end of the 17th century. In 1686 alone these colonies shipped goods worth over £1 million to London. Exports to the colonies consisted mainly of woollen textiles; imports included sugar, tobacco and other tropical groceries for which there was a growing consumer demand. The triangular slave trade had begun to supply these Atlantic colonies with unfree African labour, for work on tobacco, rice and sugar plantations. It was based around the activities of the Royal African Company, with headquarters in London. Trade and settlement also occurred in Asian waters. This was mainly based around the activities of the East India Company, a large joint-stock company based in London. The ships of the East India Company fleet traded mainly in bullion, textiles and tea with Bengal.

Overseas commerce was conducted within the mercantilist framework of the Navigation Acts, which stipulated that all commodity trade should take place in British ships, manned by British seamen, trading between British ports and those within the empire. Despite these developments, in 1688 Britain was still a vulnerable competitor for stakes in overseas colonies and trade - her rivals were the trading empires of France and the Netherlands, as well as Spain and her client state, Portugal. Top Growth of Empire A sugar cane field and windmill in Barbados © By the end of the Napoleonic wars, this scenario had been transformed. Population growth increased rapidly after c.1770, and by 1815 the British population totalled 12 million. Agricultural productivity, proto-industrialisation, the growth of manufacturing and new mineral technologies, along with the arrival of factories, had helped the economy to industrialise. Dual occupations had largely been superseded by specialised, regular working conditions. Trade and colonisation had also proceeded apace. In 1700 most foreign commerce, by volume and value, was still conducted with Europe, but during the 18th century British overseas trade became 'Americanised'.

By 1797-8, North America and the West Indies received 57 per cent of British exports, and supplied 32 per cent of imports. ...the British became the largest and most efficient carriers of slaves to the New World... After the Royal African Company's monopoly was rescinded in 1698, the British became the largest and most efficient carriers of slaves to the New World. Private merchant houses provided the capital for this business activity, and Jamaica, the largest British slave colony, was also the wealthiest colony in the British Empire. By 1775 Britain possessed far more land and people in the Americas than either the Dutch or the French - who were the two main northern European rivals for international power and prestige. The East India Company's trade also still flourished at this time, and greater settlement by the British in Bengal occurred after c.1765. The loss of the thirteen mainland American colonies in the War of Independence was a major blow to British imperial strength, but Britain recovered swiftly from this disaster, and acquired additional territories during the long war years with France from 1793 to 1815.

The new colonies included Trinidad, Tobago, St Lucia, Guyana, the Cape Colony, Mauritius and Ceylon. Various Indian states were also subjugated. By 1815, Britain possessed a global empire that was hugely impressive in scale, and stronger in both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and around their shores, than that of any other European state. All of this had occurred within basically the same protectionist trade network as in 1688: free trade, much discussed by Adam Smith and Josiah Tucker, had failed yet to make much inroad into British economic policies. Top Which came first? To what extent were these changes between 1688 and 1815 a case of trade stimulating empire, or of empire stimulating trade? The answer is that trade and empire went hand in hand, with a symbiotic relationship to each other. Growing overseas commerce with colonies stimulated merchants to provide ships, as well as goods for expanding settler societies. The slave trade also became a vehicle for establishing an empire of slavery in the Caribbean and southern American colonies, and emigrants sailed to the colonies in search of better material conditions. They also, in some cases, had to emigrate to escape religious persecution.

Rapid population growth in 18th-century North America provided a large market for British exports. In the quarter century before the American Revolution, British foreign trade changed its commodity composition to provide a wider range of textiles, notably linen and cotton fabrics. This was in addition to a range of metalware and hardware, fabricated to meet the demands of a burgeoning colonial population with less advanced industrial processes than were current in the home country, and with some restrictions on their own manufacturing. The answer is that trade and empire went hand in hand... The slave trade stimulated British manufacturing production by the derived demand for goods such as plantation utensils, and clothing needed for slaves and estates. Colonies became linked to the metropolis by complex bilateral and multilateral shipping routes. An integrated Atlantic economy came into being after the mid-18th century, in which merchants in British, American, West Indian and Iberian ports established firm commercial ties and a modern, enterprising outlook with regard to making money through imperial trade. To what extent was British hegemony in empire, trade and industry based on the growth of imperial commerce?

Many historians have discussed this basic question, and disputed the level of stimulus to the domestic British economy, and hence to industrialisation, that was provided by the growth of empire. A negative assessment would emphasise that the profits of slavery and the slave trade were more modest than the bonanza that was once thought to have taken place, and that the contribution of slavery and the slave trade to national income was marginal at best. Sceptics would also argue that British manufacturing production owed more to demand from the domestic market than from overseas customers; they would stress agricultural productivity and other supply-side factors as the vital components of British economic growth. Others would suggest that the protectionist trade network led to the Caribbean colonies becoming a burden on the mother country, once defence and administration costs are considered, and that trade with India, with an imbalance between imports and exports, was a similar drain on British capital. Those wishing to downgrade the role of overseas trade in industrialisation also argue that gains by British financial services, both from trade and empire, were essentially derivative and parasitical. Top The impact of imperial trade Although there is no space in this article to cite detailed data, a more positive assessment of the impact of trade and colonies on British development can, however, be made.

Revenue from slavery and the slave trade filtered back into the British economy in indirect ways, with bankers, insurance specialists and country gentlemen all participating as active investors. Some historians think that the profits of slavery and the slave trade, as a proportion of national income, were impressive. British manufacturing production, it has been argued, received the additional stimulus of a large overseas trading bowl, that induced producers to increase productivity and introduce new technologies to meet this additional demand. Modern studies have shown that the net drain to the British economy from protecting the British Caribbean colonies, or from participating in the East India trade, have been exaggerated. There can be little doubt that trade and empire gave a significant boost to the proliferation and sophistication of financial services, and that this was of considerable benefit to the long-term development of the British economy. British hegemony in empire and trade by 1815 was such that Britannia did rule the waves...... No historian would argue that trade and empire had a minimal impact on emerging British industrialisation; the question is, rather, exactly how important was that impact? The current consensus is that trade and empire were significant for British economic growth in the Hanoverian period, even if they were not decisively important.

British hegemony in empire and trade by 1815 was such that Britannia did rule the waves; but this would not have been achieved without the strong support provided by the 'military-fiscal' state and the Royal Navy. The expansion of British imperial endeavours was accompanied by many years of warfare: over half of the 18th century saw the British at war, principally against France. The ability of the British government to raise taxes and loans to support aggressive military policies by Hanoverian governments, and the superiority of the Royal Navy over other European navies, both played a large part in creating the conditions through which trade and empire could flourish. Books The Illustrated Rise and Fall of the British Empire by Lawrence James (Little, Brown, 1999) The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century edited by PJ Marshall (OUP, 1998) Atlas of British Overseas Expansion edited by AN Porter (Routledge, 1994) Top About the author Kenneth Morgan is Professor of History at Brunel University. He specialises in the social and economic history of Britain and her colonies, primarily in the 18th century, and in music history.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and has been a British Academy Research Reader. His books include Bristol and the Atlantic Trade in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1993), The Birth of Industrial Britain: Economic Change, 1750-1850 (Pearson, 1999), Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the British Economy, 1660-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), Fritz Reiner, Maestro and Martinet (University of Illinois Press, 2005) and Slavery and the British Empire (Oxford University Press, 2007). British Empire: The Second Empire British Empire The Second Empire The voyages of Capt. James Cook to Australia and New Zealand in the 1770s and new conquests in India after 1763 opened a second phase of territorial expansion. The victories of the Napoleonic Wars added further possessions to the empire, among them Cape Colony, Mauritius, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, British Guiana (Guyana), and Malta.

During the second empire mercantilist ideals and regulations were gradually abandoned in response to economic and political developments in Great Britain early in the 19th cent. Britain's new industrial supremacy lent greater force to doctrines of free trade , which, as part of their critique of mercantilism, questioned the economic value of political ties between the colonies and the mother country. The plight of large nonwhite populations within the empire became a matter of concern to humanitarians. Abolition of the slave trade (1807) and of slavery (1833) was accompanied in the colonies by efforts to improve the lot of indigenous groups. Better communications and the establishment of a regular civil service facilitated the development of a more efficient colonial administration. But the growth, notably in the English-speaking colonies, of national identity and of relative national self-sufficiency, as well as a trend of opinion in Britain favoring colonial self-government, made the British, now engaged in liberalizing their own governing institutions, willing to concede certain powers of self-government to the white colonies.

In 1839, Lord Durham, in response to unrest in Canada, issued his "Report on the Affairs of British North America." Durham stated that to retain its colonies Britain should grant them a large measure of internal self-government. The British North America Act of 1867 inaugurated a pattern of devolution followed in most of the European-settled colonies by which Parliament gradually surrendered its direct governing powers; thus Australia and New Zealand followed Canada in becoming self-governing dominions. On the other hand, the British assumed greater responsibility in Africa and in India, where the Indian Mutiny had resulted (1858) in the final transfer of power from the East India Company to the British government. To govern territories with large indigenous populations, the crown colony system was developed. Such colonies, of which one of the most enduring was Hong Kong, were ruled by a British governor and consultative councils composed primarily of the governor's nominees; these, in turn, often delegated considerable powers of local government to local rulers. In the later decades of the 19th cent.

there occurred a revival of European competition for empire in which the British acquired or consolidated vast holdings in Africa—such as Nigeria, the Gold Coast (later Ghana), Rhodesia (Zambia and Zimbabwe), South Africa, and Egypt—and in Asia—such as Burma (Myanmar) and Malaya. The size and wealth of the empire and the anxieties produced by European colonial competition stimulated a desire for imperial solidarity. The Imperial Conference , begun in 1887, represented an attempt to strengthen Britain's ties with those colonies that had become self-governing territories. Sections in this article: British colonial rule | Article about British colonial rule by The Free Dictionary British colonial rule | Article about British colonial rule by The Free Dictionary Also found in: Dictionary , Thesaurus , Wikipedia . British Empire, overseas territories linked to Great Britain in a variety of constitutional relationships, established over a period of three centuries. The establishment of the empire resulted primarily from commercial and political motives and emigration movements (see imperialism imperialism, broadly, the extension of rule or influence by one government, nation, or society over another. Early Empires Evidence of the existence of empires dates back to the dawn of written history in Egypt and in Mesopotamia, where local rulers extended their .....

Click the link for more information. ); its long endurance resulted from British command of the seas and preeminence in international commerce, and from the flexibility of British rule. At its height in the late 19th and early 20th cent., the empire included territories on all continents, comprising about one quarter of the world's population and area. Probably the outstanding impact of the British Empire has been the dissemination of European ideas, particularly of British political institutions and of English as a lingua franca, throughout a large part of the world. The First Empire The origins of the empire date from the late 16th cent. with the private commercial ventures, chartered and encouraged by the crown, of chartered companies chartered companies, associations for foreign trade, exploration, and colonization that came into existence with the formation of the European nation states and their overseas expansion. An association received its charter from the state and sometimes had state support. ..... Click the link for more information. . These companies sometimes had certain powers of political control as well as commercial monopolies over designated geographical areas. Usually they began by setting up fortified trading posts, but where no strong indigenous government existed the English gradually extended their powers over the surrounding area.

In this way scattered posts were established in India and the East Indies (for spices, coffee, and tea), defying Portuguese and later Dutch hegemony, and in Newfoundland (for fish) and Hudson Bay (for furs), where the main adversaries were the French. In the 17th cent. European demand for sugar and tobacco led to the growth of plantations on the islands of the Caribbean and in SE North America. These colonies, together with those established by Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters in NE North America, attracted a considerable and diversified influx of European settlers. Organized by chartered companies, the colonies soon developed representative institutions, evolving from the company governing body and modeled on English lines. The need for cheap labor to work the plantations fostered the growth of the African slave trade. New chartered companies secured posts on the African coasts as markets for captured slaves from the interior. An integrated imperial trade arose, involving the exchange of African slaves for West Indian molasses and sugar, English cloth and manufactured goods, and American fish and timber.

To achieve the imperial self-sufficiency required by prevailing theories of mercantilism mercantilism , economic system of the major trading nations during the 16th, 17th, and 18th cent., based on the premise that national wealth and power were best served by increasing exports and collecting precious metals in return. ..... Click the link for more information. , and, more immediately, to increase British wealth and naval strength, the Navigation Acts Navigation Acts, in English history, name given to certain parliamentary legislation, more properly called the British Acts of Trade. The acts were an outgrowth of mercantilism, and followed principles laid down by Tudor and early Stuart trade regulations. ..... Click the link for more information. were passed, restricting colonial trade exclusively to British ships and making England the sole market for important colonial products. Developments in the late 17th and early 18th cent. were characterized by a weakening of the Spanish and Dutch empires, exposing their territories to British encroachment, and by growing Anglo-French rivalry in India, Canada, and Africa. At this time the British government attempted to assert greater direct control over the expanding empire.

In the 1680s the revision of certain colonial charters to bring the North American and West Indian colonies under the supervision of royal governors resulted in chronic friction between the governors and elected colonial assemblies. The early 18th cent. saw a reorganization and revitalization of many of the old chartered companies. In India, from the 1740s to 1763, the British East India Company East India Company, British, 1600–1874, company chartered by Queen Elizabeth I for trade with Asia. The original object of the group of merchants involved was to break the Dutch monopoly of the spice trade with the East Indies. ..... Click the link for more information. and its French counterpart were engaged in a military and commercial rivalry in which the British were ultimately victorious. The political fragmentation of the Mughal empire permitted the absorption of one area after another by the British. The Treaty of Paris (1763; see under Paris, Treaty of Paris, Treaty of, any of several important treaties, signed at or near Paris, France. The Treaty of 1763 The Treaty of Paris of Feb.

10, 1763, was signed by Great Britain, France, and Spain. ..... Click the link for more information. ) firmly established the British in India and Canada, but the financial burdens of war involved the government in difficulties with the American colonies. The success of the American Revolution American Revolution, 1775–83, struggle by which the Thirteen Colonies on the Atlantic seaboard of North America won independence from Great Britain and became the United States. It is also called the American War of Independence. ..... Click the link for more information. marked the end of the first British Empire. The Second Empire The voyages of Capt. James Cook to Australia and New Zealand in the 1770s and new conquests in India after 1763 opened a second phase of territorial expansion. The victories of the Napoleonic Wars Napoleonic Wars, 1803–15, the wars waged by or against France under Napoleon I. For a discussion of them see under Napoleon I. ..... Click the link for more information. added further possessions to the empire, among them Cape Colony, Mauritius, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Trinidad and Tobago, St.

Lucia, British Guiana (Guyana), and Malta. During the second empire mercantilist ideals and regulations were gradually abandoned in response to economic and political developments in Great Britain early in the 19th cent. Britain's new industrial supremacy lent greater force to doctrines of free trade free trade, in modern usage, trade or commerce carried on without such restrictions as import duties, export bounties, domestic production subsidies, trade quotas, or import licenses. ..... Click the link for more information. , which, as part of their critique of mercantilism, questioned the economic value of political ties between the colonies and the mother country. The plight of large nonwhite populations within the empire became a matter of concern to humanitarians. Abolition of the slave trade (1807) and of slavery (1833) was accompanied in the colonies by efforts to improve the lot of indigenous groups. Better communications and the establishment of a regular civil service facilitated the development of a more efficient colonial administration.

But the growth, notably in the English-speaking colonies, of national identity and of relative national self-sufficiency, as well as a trend of opinion in Britain favoring colonial self-government, made the British, now engaged in liberalizing their own governing institutions, willing to concede certain powers of self-government to the white colonies. In 1839, Lord Durham, in response to unrest in Canada, issued his "Report on the Affairs of British North America." Durham stated that to retain its colonies Britain should grant them a large measure of internal self-government. The British North America Act British North America Act, law passed by the British Parliament in 1867 that provided for the unification of the Canadian provinces into the dominion of Canada. Until 1982 the act also functioned as the constitution of Canada. ..... Click the link for more information. of 1867 inaugurated a pattern of devolution followed in most of the European-settled colonies by which Parliament gradually surrendered its direct governing powers; thus Australia and New Zealand followed Canada in becoming self-governing dominions.

On the other hand, the British assumed greater responsibility in Africa and in India, where the Indian Mutiny Indian Mutiny, 1857–58, revolt that began with Indian soldiers in the Bengal army of the British East India Company but developed into a widespread uprising against British rule in India. It is also known as the Sepoy Rebellion, sepoys being the native soldiers. ..... Click the link for more information. had resulted (1858) in the final transfer of power from the East India Company to the British government. To govern territories with large indigenous populations, the crown colony system was developed. Such colonies, of which one of the most enduring was Hong Kong, were ruled by a British governor and consultative councils composed primarily of the governor's nominees; these, in turn, often delegated considerable powers of local government to local rulers. In the later decades of the 19th cent. there occurred a revival of European competition for empire in which the British acquired or consolidated vast holdings in Africa—such as Nigeria, the Gold Coast (later Ghana), Rhodesia (Zambia and Zimbabwe), South Africa, and Egypt—and in Asia—such as Burma (Myanmar) and Malaya.

The size and wealth of the empire and the anxieties produced by European colonial competition stimulated a desire for imperial solidarity. The Imperial Conference Imperial Conference, assembly of representatives of the self-governing members of the British Empire, held about every four years until World War II. The meetings prior to 1911—in 1887, 1897, 1902, and 1907—were known as Colonial Conferences, and were chiefly ..... Click the link for more information. , begun in 1887, represented an attempt to strengthen Britain's ties with those colonies that had become self-governing territories. From Empire to Commonwealth World War I brought the British Empire to the peak of its expansion, but in the years that followed came its decline. Victory added, under the system of mandates mandates, system of trusteeships established by Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations for the administration of former Turkish territories and of former German colonies. ..... Click the link for more information. , new territories, including Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, and several former German territories in Africa and Asia.

Imperial contributions had considerably strengthened the British war effort (more than 200,000 men from the overseas empire died in the war; the dominions and India signed the Versailles Treaty and joined the League of Nations), but at the same time expectations were raised among colonial populations that an increased measure of self-government would be granted. Nationalist agitation against economic disparities, often stimulated by acts of racial discrimination by British settlers, was particularly strong in India (see Indian National Congress Indian National Congress, Indian political party, founded in 1885. Its founding members proposed economic reforms and wanted a larger role in the making of British policy for India. ..... Click the link for more information. ) and in parts of Africa. Although loath to lessen its hold over countries it had done much to develop, and thereby to incur great economic and political loss, Britain gradually capitulated to the pressures of nationalist sentiment. Iraq gained full sovereignty in 1932; British privileges in Egypt were modified by treaty in 1936; and concessions were made toward self-government in India and later in the African colonies.

In 1931 the Statute of Westminster Westminster, Statute of, 1931, in British imperial history, an act of the British Parliament that gave formal recognition to the autonomy of the dominions of the British Empire and was in effect the founding charter of the British Commonwealth of Nations. ..... Click the link for more information. officially recognized the independent and equal status under the crown of the former dominions within a British Commonwealth of Nations Commonwealth of Nations, voluntary association of Great Britain and its dependencies, certain former British dependencies that are now sovereign states and their dependencies, and the associated states (states with full internal government but whose external relations are ..... Click the link for more information. , thus marking the advent of free cooperation among equal partners. After World War II self-government advanced rapidly in all parts of the empire. In 1947, India was partitioned and independence granted to the new states of India and Pakistan. In 1948 the mandate over Palestine was relinquished, and Burma (Myanmar) gained independence as a republic. Other parts of the empire, notably in Africa, gained independence and subsequently joined the Commonwealth.

In 1997 Hong Kong passed to China and, in the opinion of many historians, the British Empire definitively ended. While the empire may have faded into history, Great Britain still continues to administer many dependencies throughout the world. They include Gibraltar in the Mediterranean; the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands, and St. Helena (including Ascension and Tristan da Cunha) in the South Atlantic; Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands in the West Indies; and Pitcairn Island in the Pacific. These dependencies have varying degrees of self-government. In 1982 Britain clashed with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, retaking them by force after Argentina, which also claims them, had invaded and seized the islands. Bibliography See The Cambridge History of the British Empire (8 vol., 1929–1963); R. A. Huttenback, The British Imperial Experience (1966); J. A. Williamson, A Short History of British Expansion (2 vol., 6th ed. 1967); C. E.

Carrington, The British Overseas (2d ed. 1968); C. Cross, The Fall of the British Empire (1968); G. S. Graham, A Concise History of the British Empire (1970); C. Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (1972); T. O. Lloyd, The British Empire, 1558–1982 (1984); A. Clayton, The British Empire as a Superpower, 1919–1939 (1986); A. J. Christopher, The British Empire at Its Zenith (1988); P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (rev. ed. 2003); N. Ferguson, Empire (2003); S. Schama, A History of Britain: The Fate of Empire, 1776–2000 (2003); P. Clarke, The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire (2008); P.

Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781–1997 (2008); J. Darwin, The Empire Project (2009) and Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain (2013). British Empire the designation given to the aggregate of Great Britain and its colonial possessions. The term “British Empire” came into official use in the mid-1870’s. The first colonial seizures by England date back to the epoch of feudalism. In the 12th century the conquest of Ireland began. In a later period, with the ripening of capitalist relations within English feudalism, England began its colonial policy proper. In 1583 the island of Newfoundland was seized, and in 1607 the first English colony in North America (Virginia) was founded. In wars at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century England dealt a number of heavy blows to Spain, its chief rival at sea and the biggest colonial power of the time. Large-scale monopolistic trading companies were formed in England, including the East India Company (1600).

These companies not only carried on trade with overseas countries but also began the seizure of strongholds in Asia and Africa. In this period the English policy of colonial seizures, although it was directly related to the development of trade and industry, was determined mainly by the interests of the aristocracy, which was seeking to acquire overseas territories for the consolidation of its feudal land monopoly. With the establishment of the capitalist system in England as a result of the bourgeois revolution of the 17th century, English colonial expansion intensified. In wars in 1652-54, 1665-67, and 1672-74, England defeated Holland and captured a number of territories in North America. In the mid-17th century, Portugal and its large colonial empire became dependent on England. During the War of the Spanish Succession, Great Britain (the name that became established after 1707 for the united kingdom of England and Scotland) seized Gibraltar and new territories in North America.

In the Seven Years’ War of 1756-63, Great Britain dealt a heavy blow to feudal-absolutist France, which by that time had become its chief rival in the struggle for commercial and colonial hegemony, and fatally undermined Spain’s colonial might. The English annexed French Canada and installed their rule in North America. The conquest of India unfolded: the East India Company took over Bengal in 1757. “The events of the Seven Years’ War transformed the East India Company from a commercial into a military and territorial power. It was then that the foundation was laid of the present British Empire in the East,” wrote K. Marx in 1853 (K. Marx, and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 9, p. 152). The formation of the British colonial empire was a constituent part of the single world-historical process of the establishment of capitalism, which occurred most swiftly in Great Britain. The exploitation of colonies (especially India), along with the slave trade, was one of the principal aspects of the primary accumulation of capital in that country and contributed in large measure to the Industrial Revolution.

The development of capitalist relations in the colonies (above all in India) was hampered by the policy of the mother country, which sought to preserve the feudal and prefeudal forms of land ownership. The situation of the British colonies in North America was different. These colonies were populated by English settlers, while Indian tribes were driven from their lands and annihilated. In the North American colonies, despite the resistance of the mother country, capitalist relations developed relatively quickly. In the last quarter of the 18th century, the British Empire experienced its first crisis. As a result of the War of Independence in North America (1775-83), Great Britain lost 13 North American colonies. English capitalism overcame this crisis comparatively easily. As a result of wars with Napoleon’s France, Great Britain triumphed in the struggle for colonial and commercial supremacy. The Congress of Vienna (1814-15) secured for Great Britain the Cape Colony (South Africa), Malta, Ceylon, and other territories that it had seized in the late 18th century and early 19th century.

The victory over France and the establishment of Great Britain’s domination of the sea promoted an increase in its colonial expansion in all parts of the world. In the first half of the 19th century Great Britain, in the main, completed the conquest of India and was colonizing Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. As a result of the Opium Wars of 1840-42 (in Russian, the Anglo-Chinese War) and 1856-60 (the Anglo-French-Chinese War), the first unequal treaties were imposed on China, and a number of Chinese ports were forcibly opened for British trade. Great Britain seized the island of Hsiangkang (Hong Kong), which was subsequently turned into a base for British expansion in China. Beginning in the mid-19th century, two distinguishing features of imperialism were manifested in Great Britain: vast colonial possessions and a monopolistic position on the world market. In this period a system of economic relations was evolving within the British Empire, based on the domination of the mother country, which used the colonies as sources of raw materials and markets. The growing competition of British industry was having an increasingly destructive effect on the economies of the colonies.

The import of British industrial goods led to the ruin of local domestic industry (especially in India, where cheap English fabrics caused no less devastating consequences than the military expeditions of the colonialists) and led to the destruction of the alliance between the craftsmen and the farmers, on which the rural community was based in most colonies. Relying on the support of the exploiter (most often feudal) classes of the colonies, the British colonialists practiced on a wide scale in the colonies the principle of “divide and rule”; in India, enmity was artificially inflamed between Hindus and Muslims and between individual provinces and principalities. The intensification of the British colonial yoke caused a number of anticolonial revolts. The largest of them was the Indian Mutiny of 1857-59, which threatened British rule in India and forced the colonialists to change the system of government of India. In 1858 the East India Company was liquidated; India became a crown colony, and in 1876 the English Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India.

A special case was the settled colonies (Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), a large part of whose population was composed of emigrants from Great Britain (in Canada, from Great Britain and France). By the mid-19th century, during a tenacious struggle (revolts in Canada in 1837-38, in Australia in 1854), these colonies achieved internal self-government (in 1867, Canada became the first British dominion) and began to develop as overseas branches of British capitalism; their ruling circles regarded the remaining colonies as being under their joint ownership with the English bourgeoisie. In the last quarter of the 19th century Great Britain, despite the loss of its world industrial monopoly, not only preserved but substantially enlarged its colonial empire. The struggle for the capture of not yet divided territories and for the strengthening of the British Empire was the core of British foreign policy. Making use of its supremacy at sea and of its vast network of naval bases and strongholds, the British colonialists waged numerous colonial wars. In the 1880’s and 1890’s, enormous territories were taken over on the western and eastern coasts of Africa.

With the seizure of Cyprus (1878), the establishment of control over the Suez Canal (1875) and of British rule in Egypt (1882), and with the completion of the conquest of Burma (1885), Great Britain’s position in vast regions of Asia and Africa was solidified. After bloody wars, Great Britain established a de facto protectorate over Afghanistan. In 1898, under the guise of a “lease,” it seized from China the port of Weihaiwei andcompleted the seizure of the peninsula of Jiulong (Kowloon). Great Britain entered the age of imperialism as the possessor of an enormous colonial empire that provided it with monopolistic markets and spheres for investment. “In this case, enormous exports of capital,” V. I. Lenin pointed out, “are bound up most closely with vast colonies” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 27, p. 361).

By the end of 1913 the countries of the British Empire accounted for about half of all British investments abroad (£1,780,000,000 out of £ 3,763,000,000). The exploitation of the colonies led to the intensification of the features of parasitism and decay in the British economy. The desire of British capitalists to preserve and enlarge the British Empire remained one of the determining factors of Great Britain’s foreign policy. This purpose was served by a naval-arms race and an increase in the army and the colonial bureaucracy. The British Empire was a complex political-economic system, all of whose members were closely tied to the mother country and obeyed it. This situation was promoted, in large part, aside from direct political and military coercion, by the system of economic relations that had evolved and that made the countries of the empire fully dependent on Great Britain. Despite tenacious resistance by the mother country, industry was developing in the countries of the British Empire (especially in the settled colonies and India); a national bourgeoisie and a proletariat were taking shape and becoming an increasingly serious force in political life.

The Russian Revolution of 1905-07 was a major influence on the development of the national liberation movement in the British Empire. The Indian National Congress in 1906 put forth a demand for self-government for India. However, the British authorities brutally suppressed the anticolonial activities. In the first decades of the 20th century the dominions of the Commonwealth of Australia (1901), New Zealand (1907), the Union of South Africa (1910), and Newfoundland (1917) were formed. The governments of the dominions were called to discuss questions of the foreign policy and defense of the British Empire at the imperial conferences. The capitalists of the dominions participated with the British capitalists in the exploitation of the colonial part of the British Empire. By V. I. Lenin’s definition, this was the participation of the dominions in the imperialism of the mother country. In addition to this, “local imperialism” by the dominions was developing, manifested at that time in their effort to subordinate certain parts of the British Empire to their influence (ibid., vol. 28, p. 511).

In the late 19th century and early 20th, particular importance was acquired by Anglo-German imperialist contradictions (including their colonial and maritime rivalry), which played the principal role in the onset of World War I (1914-1918). Great Britain’s entry into the war automatically entailed the participation of the dominions as well. (See the state of the British Empire before World War I in Table 1.) Great Britain’s dominance in fact extended also to Egypt (area, 995,000 sq km; population, over 11,000,000), Nepal (area, 140,000 sq km; population, about 5,000,000), Afghanistan (area, 650,000 sq km; population, about 6,000,000) and to Hsiangkang (Hong Kong; population, 457,000) and Weihaiwei (population, 147,000), which were wrested from China. World War I upset the economic relations that had evolved in the British Empire.

This contributed to the stepped-up economic development of the dominions. Great Britain was compelled to recognize their rights to conduct an autonomous foreign policy. The first appearance of the dominions and India in the world arena was their participation in the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty (1919). The dominions joined the League of Nations as autonomous members. As a result of World War I, the British Empire expanded. The imperialists of Great Britain and the dominions annexed a number of possessions from their rivals. Mandated territories of Great Britain (Iraq, Palestine, Transjordan, Tanganyika, parts of Togo and of the Cameroons), the Union of South Africa (Southwest Africa), the Commonwealth of Australia (part of New Guinea and contiguous islands of Oceania), and of New Zealand (West Samoa Islands) entered the British Empire. British imperialism expanded its positions in the region of the Near and Middle East. Many states of that region that formally did not belong to the British Empire (for example, the states of the Arabian Peninsula) in fact were semicolonies of Great Britain. Table 1.

The British Empire in 1912-13, on the eve of World War I Mother country Great Britain, Colonisation History, Colonisation: resources, power and exploration, SOSE Year 6, QLD | Online Education Home Schooling Skwirk Australia In the last chapter we saw how Spain built up its colonies. In this chapter, we will look at another powerful coloniser of the 14th century. What is 'the British Empire'? The British Empire was the most extensive empire in world history. It was a product of the European Age of Discovery in the late 15th century. The 'first British Empire' included British expansion from the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. The 'second British Empire' included all colonies in Asia and Africa from the 18th century until the early 20th century. At its height in the late 19th and early 20th century, the British Empire had colonies on all continents. The British colonies made up about a quarter of the world's population and area. As the British Empire expanded, it brought with it European ideas and the English language to its colonies. See image 1 Why did the British colonise?

The British began colonising mainly because of their need to trade, rather than the need for military conquest. This is why they are known as a trade-based empire. In the 16th century, England was a poor country. When they began colonising, it was not as missionaries. When the English put to sea, it aimed to seek immediate profits. The Industrial Revolution which took place in Europe in 17th century gave rise to the need for raw materials. The British looked at Southeast Asia as a good target as they were rich in natural resources. After some early colonies were established and become the sole markets to buy English goods, the English realised the huge commercial potential of overseas acquisitions. They consequently tried to expand their colonisation. The British Empire lasted very long because of three reasons. First, the British have good command of the sea. Second, they were outstanding in international trading, and finally, the British rule was flexible. The First Empire In the late 16th century, Britain had many chartered companies. They were private companies established by the crown. Having the exclusive right to do business in a certain area, these companies became influential in politics.

To expand their business and find buyers for their products, these companies looked for trading posts in the other countries. When the government in these countries was not strong enough, the English gradually took complete control. This enable the British to built up colonies in India and the East Indies as well as Hudson Bay. See image 2 The most popular chartered company known during the First Empire is the British East India Company. This company was granted an English Royal Charter by Elizabeth title "Elizabeth I of England" in 1600 to support trading in India. See image 3 In the 17th century, the British set up plantations to produce sugar and tobacco on the islands of the Caribbean as well as in North America. These colonies attracted a large amount of European settlers. The British needed labourers to work in these plantations, so they started to trade slaves. During this time, the common way the British traded with its colonies was that it would sell West Indian molasses, sugar, English cloth, manufactured goods, American fish and timber to its colonies. In exchange for these goods, the colonies would sell them African slaves, who the British could use in their plantations.

To secure its right and to increase its wealth, the British government passed a law which allowed only British ships to trade with the colonies. This meant that these colonies could only sell their products to England. In the early 18th century, chartered companies were reorganised. In India, from the 1740s to 1763, the British East India Company had a conflict with its French counterpart. The British finally won. In 1763, the British established colonies in India and Canada. However, the British met many difficulties when they tried to colonise America. The first British Empire ended with the successful revolution of thirteen colonial states in America. The Second Empire Realising the potential of the colonies, the British started to expand further, first by the voyages of Capt. James Cook to Australia and New Zealand in the 1770s and second, through new conquests in India after 1763. After the victories of the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815), the British had more colonies. These included, Cape Colony, Mauritius, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Trinidad and Tobago, St.

Lucia, British Guiana (Guyana), and Malta. Early in the 19th century, the British gradually abandoned many strict regulations. It became a very strong country in the world, which allowed it to apply the principle of free trade. To improve the lives of many native inhabitants, the British government also abolished slave trade in 1807 and slavery in 1833. The British also built up regular civil service to create a more efficient colonial administration. However, when these colonies became less dependent on the British, they also developed a stronger national identity. Thus, they tried to liberalise themselves from the British, who also encouraged these colonies to have a government of its own. In 1839, Lord Durham, in response to unrest in Canada, issued his "Report on the Affairs of British North America." Durham suggested, that to retain its colonies, Britain should grant them a large measure of internal self-government. In 1867, the British gradually surrendered their direct governing powers. Australia and New Zealand also became self-governing dominions. However, the British government still needed to control India because of its relationship with the East India Company.

To govern territories with large native populations, the British developed a system called the crown colony system. Such colonies were ruled by a British governor and consultative councils from the native inhabitants. In the later decades of the 19th century, other European countries competed for empire in which the British acquired or consolidated vast holdings. These colonies included Nigeria, the Gold Coast (later Ghana), Rhodesia (Zambia and Zimbabwe), South Africa, Egypt, Burma (Myanmar) and Malaya. This forced the British to encourage a tie and solidarity between its colonies. In 1887, the British government issued the Imperial Conference, which was an attempt to strengthen Britain's ties with those colonies that had become self-governing territories. Legacies The British left many legacies to its colonial countries. Although we still discuss the values of these legacies, they should be listed as follows: It brought significant changes to Southeast Asia. The British built more ports, railways and roads to these countries. The British colonisation changed the social and racial structure of the colonised countries. The British colonisation led many local intellectuals to rise up to liberalise their country. It led to the appearance of nationalism.

As a result of British colonisation, English became a popular language of the world and continues to be dominant even today. The British colonisation brought law, order and technology into India and changed them into a modern state. The modern technology from the British, which was aimed to serve their productions and trading, was also introduced into the colonised countries thus enabling their modernisation and development.

Question: After which war did Britain gain Ceylon. Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago?
Answer: Napoleonic Wars